Think of you, Where ever you are
by sorrows requiem
Summary: Riku's been tricked into saving Sora only to find it's on big trap. What will hapen to him now that he's in enemy hands, and how will he ever save Sora from himself? Seventh chapter of a fiction I've started working on with a friend, Tilly Tally. Shoujina
1. Contents

Slumped in a chair, hugging Riku to himself, Axel slowly drifted into dream: dark, shapeless whispers. Shadowy hands stroked him from all directions, trailing fire a crossed his skin, illuminating paper like screens with shifting memories painted on the surface. Memories of a time when he had hands to hold and a person to cuddle up next to on frigid nights, echoes of a feather-light voice rippled a crossed his consciousness. Laughter lifted his heart, but something had begun to tug at his mind, no, shake. Reality rushed towards him in pieces, like a mirror shattering in reverse, fragments falling into place to form a picture.

As he roused, a figure convulsed in his lap, tremors raking the bundled form, "Wha--… No!" Riku lay in his lap, shaking violently, lids fluttering, sweat streaking his forehead.

"Holy crap! Don't die now, if you go to, it's all lost!" head whipping wildly from side to side, his eyes settled on a large, hammered bronze bathtub. The type found throughout the fortress, modified to allow for modern plumbing. Hefting the trembling bundle, he strode over to the faucet and cranked the cold handle as far as it would go, clear water gushing into the basin. Nearly a third full already, he cast Blizzara on the tub, hoping to cool the water further. He twisted the knob until the water was choked of, drips still falling from the end of the spout.

With a grunt, he hefted Riku and all into the ice, cold water, gulping for air suddenly as his lung seem to seize, leaving him momentarily breathless.

"Huh, this better work, you feel like you're burning up from the inside, and this is the only way I can think of cooling you down before you cook your brain. Don't you dare give up on me. If you don't make it, and I get a cold, I am so bringing you back to life, just so I can kill you myself." "_Don't ask me how I'll accomplish it, though,_" Axel thought to himself. "_If he knew how to do that, Roxas wouldn't be haunting him in his dreams; he'd be helping him with this plan_."

Teeth chattering, Axel waited for the platinum blonde in his arms to stop trembling. Minutes passed, seeming to pool around them. After what felt like forever, he realized he was shaking, not Riku's motionless body. He held his hand in front of the boy's nose, sighing when he felt the tickle of breath on his palm.

He relaxed, sluggish in the icy liquid surrounding them, legs and torso feeling fuzzy, almost prickly to touch. "_Why get out, I can't feel any of my lower half anyway. At least he's cooled off, he's probably just cozy underneath all the blankets._" And time grew more lethargic, seeping though cracks in the wall, dripping down the walls. Moments took years, lifetimes took eons. Water fell from the faucet, sending small ripples across the surface of the water. Silence screamed in Axel's ears, and his eyelids grew heavy. The sandman played tricks on him, making the world slide in and out of focus. The fire crackled in what seemed like an extreme distance.

"Oh dear," he whispered, his voice sounding alien to his ears. "I think I may be in a spot of trouble." His eyes trained on one spot, he concentrated hard, trying to remember something. What, he couldn't quite grasp. And as he blinked, the world around him jerked to a stand still, the fire frozen in place. It seemed to have walked to the edge of a great precept, and now hung there, in mid-leap, smile spread across its face. As he craned his neck, a drop of water hung three inches off the surface of the bath water, waiting. He gasped for the second time the night. All the encompassed him was at a stand still; someone had taken Father Time's rattle and stomped on it, smashing it into little bits.

"Wow, that's a nifty trick." Axel looked at the huddled form in his lap in pure, undiluted wonder. "What was in that syringe?" While he knew the boy wouldn't or couldn't answer, he felt that something had been set into motion, something he couldn't hope to completely understand without hours to study and explanation. This was definitely going to go down as at least a four in his top ten of weird and indefinable events.

"I wish you were here to see this, Roxas. You would've never believed me if I told you about this." With an audible "humph," Axel shifted so he could see more of the room. And, as if someone had flipped the switch on Time's circuit breaker, the hesitant drop fell with a "plip," and the fire crackled as a log shifted under the weight of another branch of timber.

Standing suddenly, with his arms under the youth's, Axel rose out of the bath, and hauled both of them out of the cold. He slowly unwound the soggy blankets from around the still form and dropped them to the floor. His black robe followed suit, leaving him shivering in a pair of black, leather pants, a similarly colored tank top, and a puddle-filled pair of shoes. He deposited Riku on the cushy bed and turned to find more covers for the sleeping form. Taking a new stack of fleece blankets out of the closet, he shook the folds out and draped them across the mattress and all. Finishing with the last one, he shuffled to the walking in closet off to the right of the main room.

Once in side, he slumped against the door, exhausted. Summoning a spurt of energy, Axel stumbled away from the recently sealed portal, and striped of his sodden clothes. They formed a pile on the stone floor, the unfinished granite darken as the water seeped into its many pores.

Fumbling in the drawers along the wall, he fished out a fresh shirt and a pair of pajama pants with a draw-string waist. The bold green t-shirt and the sky-blue pants with wispy clouds drifting all over were and odd couple, but little mattered to Axel beyond the fact that they were warm and dry. Swaying slightly, he managed to exit the closet, trip in an expertly controlled fashion towards the bed, and splayed himself out beside the now silent form of Riku. The teen slept as if nothing had happened and he was just at home, sleeping in his bed, dreaming of impossible feats and unending adventures.

"Lucky bastard," hissed between Axel's lips and he joined the boy in effortless slumber, ghost-like digits caressing endless plains of skin.


	2. Dusk

For all of the time he had spent wondering recently, this was defiantly the most profoundly lost and confused he could remember being. He had returned to the shop with a _thud_ about an hour ago, and had thanked the girl and her sister for bringing him to meet their "aunt," then left, all in one, big, cloudy daze.

The stones beneath his feet sounded real, the conversations drifting by where as confusing as they would have been had he been actually hearing them, not dreaming the entire world around him into being. As he walked, he came upon a café and decided he needed to sit down for a second and think.

He waited, dumbly staring at the candle burning on the roughly honed table, sifting through all that he could recall from the past few days he'd been on this rock. While he sunk deeper into thought, a waitress walked up beside him and waited with her pencil on the pad of paper, ready to take his order.

Of course, Sora wasn't there to notice, he was eons away, pondering the possibilities that had brought him to this sudden but all too real assertion. The waitress beside him began to tap her pencil impatiently, and giving up, reached out to touch the customer sitting beside her.

"What!" The sudden feeling of someone near shook Sora from his reprieve.

"Good evening sir, can I get you something for supper? Tonight's special is the bacon cheeseburger. It comes with fries, salad, and a drink. Tonight's soups are—"

"What would I like?" Sora stared, dumb-founded. "This world doesn't even exist, it's all in my mind and you think I'm worried about what I'm going too have for supper. It's not even going to be real food even if I ordered."

"Wait, if I've been dreaming this whole time, what about the real me? The awake me. Where would I be getting food? Crap, what if I'm stuck in some chamber somewhere, wasting away to nothing. Oh god, I could die any minute from starvation!"

Panic had set in, the brown haired boy was beginning to rant to himself about where the "real" he would be, and the waitress was quite sure this meant he was insane. And the thing about the insane is they can rarely pay for meals.

"Right, whatever. There's no loitering so get out."

That sudden proclamation broke a deeply hidden thread in Sora's mind and rage began to cloud his vision. Not announce, but complete, unbased, unguided rage.

Keyblade in hand, he began to swing wildly at those in the vicinity. Dinners, waitresses, furniture, it all fell to the edge of the mythical weapon. Where fear-struck townsfolk stood, the echoes of a scream and a blue tinged smoke remained.

And as he rampaged, the edges of the clock tower became blurry somewhere else in town. People started to fizz away to nothing in the town square. But the slaughter continued, Sora now chased after a screaming toddler.

The girl ran down ally ways, ducked under carts in the now empty market. Tear-streaks dried on her flushed cheeks, pants interrupting the shrieks that escaped from her now red lips. Her heart thundered in her head, wiping everything from her mind but fleeing the attacker behind her.

One turn and she was abruptly frozen, face to face with a tall brick wall. There was nothing left for her to do, so she huddled in the corner, crouching further into the shadows. Trembling, she hid her face in her knees, hugging her legs with one arm while covering her head with the other. The sound of footfalls crescendoed and stopped at the end of the surface street.

There Sora stood, an unearthly grin smeared across his face, tempting those who saw it to ask what exactly was so funny about the situation before they vanished. He knew she was hidden, awaiting his judgment. But it wasn't a matter of right or wrong, only wither he was satisfied with the slaughter that should have remained in his wake.

However, something else entirely was left behind him. Unnatural silence prevailed in the streets. And stranger still where the holes that had begun to appear in the scenery. Large spots of inky blackness had begun to spread, like a cellulose film-strip projecting the image of the town had gotten stuck and was melting under the focused heat of the lens.

Laughter echoed off the builds that remained. Twisted and cruel, it sent the small girl into a fear-stricken sweat. "Well, well, what do we have here?" the once innocent sounding voice of the silhouetted teen sounded hollow and frigid compared to his usually ethereal air.

"The mouse has lost her way and now will have to pay. Ha ha, who know it would be so easy, just to end you all." He spread his arms wide, reveling in the dominance he held over the small figure in the alleyway. "Just a flick of my wrist," here he swung his Keyblade through the air in a sweeping arc before him, "and all my problems are solved. Heh, so simple and clean."

"Oh God," whimpered the girl. Slowly, she tried to curl further in on herself, wishing she could just disappear. A wish soon to be granted as the edge of the roofs above them began to disintegrate. Mortar crumbled into thin air and bricks that should have plummeted to the ground below melted into smoke instead. But none of this was happening fast enough to save the girl from her fate. Slowly the Key blade master advanced, humming bright, swaying little tune—greatly in contrast with the air of doom that hung around the scene.

"Fare thee well frail illusion. May the next world that awaits things of the sort you are be better then this." And with this he swung, slashing the youth in half, cleanly through her heart. Her high pitched scream echoed of what remained of the brick around him, and the smoke that remained began to dissipate.

But something else had changed too. Sora stood wide-eyed, panting, his mind scrutinized over the events before this moment. Dread seized his heart and twisted for all it was worth, wringing silent tears for the victims he'd slaughtered. One by one he remembered their deaths, quick but ruthless. He hated himself more and more by the second, his shoulders slumped and his body began to shake uncontrollably.

While he agonized, the alley ceased to exist, crackling into dusty particles. With a flash of many little lights, very much like the spots you see when you hit your head on the cabinet while standing up, Sora suddenly found himself in a glass egg. He began to choke and fell sputtering on the floor as the fluid rushed out of the splitting shell. His hands rested against the cold, wet marble, drawing in and out of focus until he shook his head and looked around him.

'It was just a dream…..' The realization slowly crept over him, but did little to sooth his writhing heart.

"I killed her…. Oh my God, I'm a monster." His voice echoed mockingly off the white walls, leaving him with nothing but his self-persecution and an undersized, soaking-wet jumper to cling to.


End file.
